Ultra Hub Plus: Vodafone 4G wireless while you wait for fibr

New customers signing for Vodafone's home fibre plans can
get an Ultra Hub Plus modem
as part of the deal. This means they get a connection on
the carrier's mobile network straight away. Lucky customers
will connect via 4G. Less fortunate ones may have to do with
a 3G connection.

Ultra Hub Plus is an
interim fix while customers wait for fibre. It means
their connection is not disrupted during the installation.
Once they are on the UFB network, it then acts as an always
on backup connection. Like a lot of these things it is good
in parts.

It goes on to
describe the Ultra Hub Plus as a "game changer": isn't
everything these days? The release also says it is super
easy to set up and use and a seamless
experience.

I tested the device and found Vodafone
isn't exaggerating on those counts. Yet it's not all
wonderful. The Hub's fixed wireless broadband performance is
only so-so.

Easy as

When you sign up, Vodafone
dispatches an Ultra Hub Plus modem by courier. Open the box
and along with the modem and its power supply are a couple
of sheets of paper. One says: "Five minute easy
start".

Experience says that a marketing department that
uses words like "game changer" then adds both ultra
and plus to an otherwise straightforward product
name might not take a lot of care over a claim like
five-minute easy start.

In practice, Vodafone's
claim is modest. I had a working connection in four
minutes.

You plug the device in, then hit the power
button. The instruction sheet says the modem's wi-fi is
active in around 90 second and the 4G or 3G connection is
ready in three minutes and thirty seconds.

Both sets of
indicator lights switched on more or less on
schedule.

Wi-fi router

The next step is to
connect wireless devices to the modem. Vodafone includes
another sheet of paper with a QR code. All you need to do is
point an iPhone or iPad camera at the code and those devices
will connect.

If you use Android, you'll need to download
a QR app first. Depending on your circumstance, this could
take you past the five minutes. But not by much.

With
Apple devices, you only need to scan once, all your other
Apple kit learns the password by what seems like telepathy.
In truth this is one of those Apple features which feels a
little like magic.

Ethernet

There are three
Ethernet ports on the back of the Ultra Hub Plus, so
connecting a laptop or desktop with a port is a breeze.
Connecting by wi-fi is also straightforward. Either use the
scan code or press the WPS button and find the Hub in your
wi-fi router list.

This is as easy and fast as Vodafone's
marketing promises.

It is not the end of the set up
story.

While the set-up speed for Ultra Hub Plus is
impressive, the broadband speed is not great.

As you can
see from the screen shots, I get around 13 mbps down, less
than 5 mbps up.

Throttle

While higher speeds
are possible in theory, Vodafone says it throttles the speed
to 12 down and 6 up. At the same time, it tweaked the
hardware to deliver a decent level of service.

How decent?
In practice the throttled, optimised throughput is plenty
for acceptable high-definition television streaming. When I
first tried, we saw plenty of buffering. Once things started
the modem seemed to cope with the stream.

Next I tested
Sky's Fan Pass and BeIn Sport on an iPad. In both cases the
apps stumbled at first. Each gave me an initial error
message. Fan Pass thought there wasn't a network connection
for a few seconds. BeIn went blank.

None of this happens
with my normal connection. It might scare less tech-savvy
users, but everything worked fine only seconds later.

In
both cases the picture was acceptable soon after. There was
a little stutter at first, then it settled down. I even
managed to get two streams running at the same time. Which
says a lot about acceptable baseline speeds for
non-specialist home internet users.

Vodafone Ultra
Hub Plus verdict

There's a clever balance here
between 'enough broadband to tied you over' and 'not
clogging the mobile network with fixed wireless traffic' or
'encouraging customers to choose this instead of fibre'.
Vodafone has the mix spot on for what the Ultra Hub Plus
promises on the box.

The Ultra Hub Plus' ability to act as
a back-up connection for when fibre fails is also
smart.

Fibre doesn't break down often, except in a power
cut which, ironically, would also take out the Ultra Hub
Plus. In that case then you'll need to use a mobile phone.
Many of us are so dependent on broadband that an alternative
channel, that's still able to handle Netflix is an insurance
policy.

Contact Bill Bennett

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